Mashing up the Design Sprint – UX Collective

Experiment until you find what works for you

Brittni: So cool that you’re taking some of the exercises and using them outside of the Sprint, can you walk me through what that looked like for you?

Ryan: Yeah definitely, here’s how it went:

Expert Interviews:

So first I ran the “Ask the Experts” exercise with them. I had my VP of Sales who is also a partner in the company, the Head of Marketing and an investor, along with 4 team leaders. So in total, I had 8 people in the room.

The Expert Interviews exercise involves using a framework to gather all relevant information about a challenge, including structuring the way that everyone takes notes. “How Might We” is a note taking method that encourages participants to reframe the way they see a problem to be more solution oriented. Ex. Someone says, “We don’t have anyone over the age of 18 buying our products”, reframed as a How Might We, could be: “How might we encourage people over the age of 18 to buy our products?”

Challenges: How Might We’s were difficult to explain to the group since it’s a completely different way of framing a problem.

Learnings: It was a key moment for our team because while I was trying to learn what was going on in the company, we quickly realised that the key stakeholders themselves weren’t really aligned. It was a powerful moment for everyone in the room.

Long Term Goal:

I ran the goal development session with the same group. This time though, two of them joined remotely. It was definitely more difficult because having that remote/digital gap made it a bit more complicated. This was a great exercise that helped us all align on what our bigger goal for the company’s future could be.

The 2 Year Goal is an exercise where the team comes up with a goal for the business, framed around the challenges that they are currently facing. Looking 2 years in the future is a nice amount of time since it’s not too far away, but far enough that the team can set a bold goal to guide them.

Challenges: Having some participants remote caused some problems because it was just more difficult to explain everything properly.

Learnings: As a first time group, best to have everyone in the room for such an intimate exercise. I felt like I lost some of the group because they were remote, but also because this was their first time doing the exercise.

Lightning Demos:

Then I came back to the team and ran a lightning demo session to gather inspiration for possible solutions.

Lightning Demo’s is an exercise where the team gathers ideas and inspiration from other companies and industries that are solving (or have solved) a similar problem. Then they share their findings with the rest of the team.

Challenges: It went really well, other than the fact that I allowed some people to participate who weren’t part of the first exercises. They got really excited about the Sprint process and a little distracted.

Learnings: People are really excited about the Design Sprint and even though it distracted people, it was a positive distraction!